Wednesday, January 25, 2017

On Fascism, Part IV

Welcome back.

Continuing to break apart and “update”
the original 25-point plan put forth by the National Socialist German Workers
Party. This is the fourth part of this exhaustive series (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V), and not a great place
to start. Once again, I do not endorse any of these platforms.

15a.
We demand the expansion and protection of Social Security and Medicare.

16.
We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation,
immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low
cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts
with the State, county or municipality.

Some of the language
and details may be lost on the modern audience. This is simpler:

16a.
We demand the government protect the middle class, and make supporting small
businesses a top priority.

17.
We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free
expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on
land and prevention of all speculation in land.

Interesting historical aside, this
measure was unpopular with farmers, who feared having their lands seized.
Hitler made a point of clarifying, stating that “gratuitous expropriation concerns
only the creation of legal opportunities, to expropriate, if necessary, land
which has been illegally acquired, or is not administered from the view-point
of the national welfare. This is directed primarily against the Jewish
land-speculation companies.”

Since we have clarifying intent, I
think it’s safe to follow it:

17a.
We demand the abolition of property taxes, as well as the return of land to the
middle class through seizure from foreign land speculation companies.

18.We demand struggle without
consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general
interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be
punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.

Here’s the meat of the matter. This is
both deliberately vague, and disturbingly broad. Point 18 is probably what
people think of when they think of Nazi domestic policy, and certainly, the
consequences of this are well known to history. I imagine that a modern-day rephrasing
would not be quite so specific:

18a.
We demand an emphasis on law and order, support for the death penalty, and a
formal stance against those who would threaten the American way of life.

19.We demand
substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a
materialistic world-order.

Fully unpacking this one seems like a bit
of a nightmare, as I really don’t want to delve deeply into the legal system of
1920s Germany. The themes seem clear enough though: self-governance, and
standing against a materialistic (meant as code for Jewish) world
order/government. Working with these themes:

19a.
We demand sovereignty, and reject all attempts of the United Nations to dictate
the laws of the United States of America.

20.
The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole
national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to
obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions.
The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with
the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the
State must be striven for by the school [Staatsbürgerkunde] as early as the
beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State
of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without
consideration of position or profession.

As near as I can tell, Staatsbügerkunde
translates as “civics”, though the conceptualization of this point seems to be more
about the patriotic indoctrination of the youth. Given that as the case:

20a.
We demand a fundamental reconstruction of the education system, one that
emphasizes practical skills, recognizes the importance of America and America’s
place in the world, and enables students to become leaders and patriots.

21.
The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother
and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness,
by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the
utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of
the young.

To be honest, I’m not sure exactly what
to make of this one. While there is still child labor throughout the world, at
the time it was highly prevalent in Germany, and indeed, in all the other major
industrial powers as well. But since, to my knowledge, there is no one strongly
advocating child labor, this point doesn’t seem to say much at all, beyond
offering support for organizations concerned with physical education. As such, I’m
going to leave this one off our final list.